Have you ever heard Gary Habermas, Michael Licona or William Lane Craig defend the resurrection of Jesus as the best explanation for the “minimal facts” about Jesus? The lists of minimal facts that they use are typically agreed to by their opponents during the debates.

Now in his early published work Dr. Ehrman expressed skepticism about these facts. He insisted that we cannot really affirm these facts.

[…]Dr. Ehrman has himself come to re-think his position on these issues. Inconsistencies in the details notwithstanding, he now recognizes that we have “solid traditions,” not only for Jesus’ burial, but also for the women’s discovery of the empty tomb, and therefore, he says, we can conclude with “some certainty” that Jesus was in fact buried by Joseph of Arimathea in a tomb and that three days later the tomb was found empty.

When I discovered that Professor Ehrman had reversed himself on this question, my admiration for his honesty and scholarly objectivity shot up. Very few scholars, once they’ve gone into print on an issue, have the courage to re-think that issue and admit that they were wrong. Dr. Ehrman’s reversal of his opinion on these matters is testimony, not merely to the force of the evidence for these four facts, but also to his determination to follow the evidence wherever it leads. What this means is that my first contention is not an issue of disagreement in tonight’s debate.

So what are the criteria that historians use to derive a list of minimal facts about Jesus?

The other way, more influential in contemporary New Testament scholarship, is to establish specific facts about Jesus without assuming the general reliability of the Gospels. The key here are the so-called “Criteria of Authenticity” which enable us to establish specific sayings or events in Jesus’ life as historical. Scholars involved in the quest of the historical Jesus have enunciated a number of these critieria for detecting historically authentic features of Jesus, such as dissimilarity to Christian teaching, multiple attestation, linguistic semitisms, traces of Palestinian milieu, retention of embarrassing material, coherence with other authentic material, and so forth.

It is somewhat misleading to call these “criteria,” for they aim at stating sufficient, not necessary, conditions of historicity. This is easy to see: suppose a saying is multiply attested and dissimilar but not embarrassing. If embarrassment were a necessary condition of authenticity, then the saying would have to be deemed inauthentic, which is wrong-headed, since its multiple attestation and dissimilarity are sufficient for authenticity. Of course, the criteria are defeasible, meaning that they are not infallible guides to authenticity. They might be better called “Indications of Authenticity” or “Signs of Credibility.”

In point of fact, what the criteria really amount to are statements about the effect of certain types of evidence upon the probability of various sayings or events in Jesus’ life. For some saying or event S and evidence of a certain type E, the criteria would state that, all things being equal, the probability of S given E is greater than the probability of S on our background knowledge alone. So, for example, all else being equal, the probability of some event or saying is greater given its multiple attestation than it would have been without it.

What are some of the factors that might serve the role of E in increasing the probability of some saying or event S? The following are some of the most important:

(1) Historical congruence: S fits in with known historical facts concerning the context in which S is said to have occurred.

(2) Independent, early attestation: S appears in multiple sources which are near to the time at which S is alleged to have occurred and which depend neither upon each other nor a common source.

(3) Embarrassment: S is awkward or counter-productive for the persons who serve as the source of information for S.

(5) Semitisms: traces in the narrative of Aramaic or Hebrew linguistic forms.

(6) Coherence: S is consistent with already established facts about Jesus.

For a good discussion of these factors see Robert Stein, “The ‘Criteria’ for Authenticity,” in Gospel PerspectivesI, ed. R. T. France and David Wenham (Sheffield, England: JSOT Press, 1980), pp. 225-63.

Notice that these “criteria” do not presuppose the general reliability of the Gospels. Rather they focus on a particular saying or event and give evidence for thinking that specific element of Jesus’ life to be historical, regardless of the general reliability of the document in which the particular saying or event is reported. These same “criteria” are thus applicable to reports of Jesus found in the apocryphal Gospels, or rabbinical writings, or even the Qur’an. Of course, if the Gospels can be shown to be generally reliable documents, so much the better! But the “criteria” do not depend on any such presupposition. They serve to help spot historical kernels even in the midst of historical chaff. Thus we need not concern ourselves with defending the Gospels’ every claim attributed to Jesus in the gospels; the question will be whether we can establish enough about Jesus to make faith in him reasonable.

And you can see Dr. Craig using these criteria to defend minimal facts in his debates. For example, in his debate with Ehrman, he alludes to the criteria when making his case for the empty tomb.

Here, he uses multiple attestation and the criteria of embarrassment:

Among the reasons which have led most scholars to this conclusion are the following:

1. The empty tomb is also multiply attested by independent, early sources.

Mark’s source didn’t end with the burial, but with the story of the empty tomb, which is tied to the burial story verbally and grammatically. Moreover, Matthew and John have independent sources about the empty tomb; it’s also mentioned in the sermons in the Acts of the Apostles (2.29; 13.36); and it’s implied by Paul in his first letter to the Corinthian church (I Cor. 15.4). Thus, we have again multiple, early, independent attestation of the fact of the empty tomb.

2. The tomb was discovered empty by women.

In patriarchal Jewish society the testimony of women was not highly regarded. In fact, the Jewish historian Josephus says that women weren’t even permitted to serve as witnesses in a Jewish court of law. Now in light of this fact, how remarkable it is that it is women who are the discoverers of Jesus’ empty tomb. Any later legendary account would certainly have made male disciples like Peter and John discover the empty tomb. The fact that it is women, rather than men, who are the discoverers of the empty tomb is best explained by the fact that they were the chief witnesses to the fact of the empty tomb, and the Gospel writers faithfully record what, for them, was an awkward and embarrassing fact.

There are actually a few more reasons for believing in the empty tomb that he doesn’t go into in the debate, but you can find them in his written work. For example, in his essay on Gerd Ludemann’s “vision” hypothesis. That essay covers the reasons for all four of his minimal facts.

So, if you are going to talk about the resurrection with a skeptic, you don’t want to invoke the Bible as some sort of inerrant/inspired Holy Book.

Try this approach instead:

Explain the criteria that historians use to get their lists of minimal facts

Explain your list of minimal facts

Defend your list of minimal facts using the criteria

Cite skeptics who admit to each of your minimal facts, to show that they are widely accepted

List some parts of the Bible that don’t pass the criteria (e.g. – guard at the tomb, Matthew earthquake)

Explain why those parts don’t pass the criteria, and explain that they are not part of your case

Challenge your opponent to either deny some or all the facts, or propose a naturalistic alternative that explains the facts better than the resurrection

Don’t let your opponent attack any of your minimal facts by attacking other parts of the Bible (e.g. – the number of angels being one or two, etc.)

And just keep in mind that there is no good case for the resurrection that does not make heavy use of the early creed in 1 Corinthians 15:3-8. You have to use that – it’s the law.

Back to the minimal facts criteria. The best essay on the minimal facts criteria that I’ve read is the one by Robert H. Stein in “Contending with Christianity’s Critics“. It’s a good short essay that goes over all the historical criteria that are used to derive the short list of facts from which we infer the conclusion “God raised Jesus from the dead”. That whole book is really very, very good.

There is not much snark in this summary, because Crossley is a solid scholar, and very fair with the evidence. He’s also done debates with Richard Bauckham and Michael Bird. You have to respect him for getting out there and defending his views in public.

SUMMARY

William Lane Craig’s opening speech

Two contentions:

There are four minimal facts that are accepted by most historians

The best explanation of the four minimal facts is that God raised Jesus from the dead

Contention 1 of 2:

Fact 1: The burial

The burial is multiply attested

The burial is based on the early source material that Mark used for his gospel

Scholars date this Markan source to within 10 years of the crucifixion

The burial is also in the early passage in 1 Cor 15:3-8

So you have 5 sources, some of which are very early

The burial is credited to a member of the Sanhedrin

the burial is probable because shows an enemy of the church doing right

this makes it unlikely to to be an invention

Fact 2: The empty tomb

The burial story supports the empty tomb

the site of Jesus’ grave was known

the disciples could not proclaim a resurrection if the body were still in it

the antagonists to the early Christians could have produced the body

The empty tomb is multiple attested

it’s mentioned explicitly in Mark

it’s in the separate sources used by Matthew and John

it’s in the early sermons documented in Acts

it’s implied by 1 Cor 15:3-8, because resurrection requires that the body is missing

The empty tomb was discovered by women

the testimony of women of women was not normally allowed in courts of law

if this story was being made up, they would have chosen male disciples

The empty tomb discover lacks legendary embellishment

there is no theological or apologetical reflection on the meaning of the tomb

The early Jewish response implies that the tomb was empty

the response was that the disciples stole the body

that requires that the tomb was found empty

Fact 3: The appearances to individuals and groups, some of the them hostile

The list of appearances is in 1 Cor 15:3-8

this material is extremely early, withing 1-3 years after the cross

James, the brother of Jesus, was not a believer when he got his appearance

Paul was hostile to the early church when he got his appearance

Specific appearances are multiply attested

Peter: attested by Luke and Paul

The twelve: attested by Luke, John and Paul

The women: attested by Matthew and John

Fact 4: The early belief in the resurrection emerged in a hostile environment

There was no background belief in a dying Messiah

There was no background belief in a single person resurrecting before the general resurrection of all of the righteous at the end of the age

The disciples were willing to die for their belief in the resurrection of Jesus

The resurrection is the best explanation for the transformation of the disciples from frightened to reckless of death

Contention 2 of 2:

The resurrection is the best explanation because it passes C.B. McCullough’s six tests for historical explanations

None of the naturalistic explanations accounts for the minimal facts as well as the resurrection

James Crossley’s opening speech

Appeals to the majority of scholars doesn’t prove anything

the majority of people in the west are Christians so of course there are a majority of scholars that support the resurrection

there are Christian schools where denial of the resurrection can result in termination

The best early sources (1 Cor 15:3-8 and Mark) are not that good

1 Cor 15:3-8 doesn’t support the empty tomb

verse 4 probably does imply a bodily resurrection

the passage does have eyewitnesses to appearances of Jesus

but there are no eyewitnesses to the empty tomb in this source

appearances occur in other cultures in different times and places

Jesus viewed himself as a martyr

his followers may have had hallucinations

Mark 16:1-8

Mark is dated to the late 30s and early 40s

The women who discover the tomb tell no one about the empty tomb

The gospels show signs of having things added to them

Jewish story telling practices allowed the teller to make things up to enhance their hero

one example of this would be the story of the earthquake and the people coming out of their graves

that story isn’t in Mark, nor any external sources like Josephus

if there really was a mass resurrection, where are these people today?

so this passage in Matthew clearly shows that at least some parts of the New Testament could involve

what about the contradiction between the women tell NO ONE and yet other people show up at the empty tomb

the story about Jesus commissioning the early church to evangelize Gentiles was probably added

there are also discrepancies in the timing of events and appearances

why are there explicit statements of high Christology in John, but not in the earlier sources?

William Lane Craig’s first rebuttal

Crossley’s response to the burial: he accepts it

Crossley’s response to the empty tomb: he thinks it was made up

rabbinical stories are not comparable to the gospel accounts

the rabbinical stories are just anecdotal creative story-telling

the gospels are ancient biographies – the genre is completely different

the rabbinic miracle stories are recorded much later than the gospels

the rabbi’s legal and moral ideas were written down right away

the miracle stories were written down a century or two later

in contrast, the miracle stories about Jesus are in the earliest sources, like Mark

the rabbinical stories are intended as entertainment, not history

the gospels are intended as biography

just because there are some legendary/apocalyptic elements in Matthew, it doesn’t undermine things like the crucfixion that are historically accurate

Crossley’s response to the evidence for the empty tomb:

no response to the burial

the empty tomb cannot be made up, it was implied by Paul early on

the women wouldn’t have said nothing forever – they eventually talked after they arrived to where the disciples were

no response to the lack of embellishment

no response to the early Jewish polemic

Crossley’s response to the appearances

he agrees that the first followers of Jesus had experiences where they thought Jesus was still alive

Crossley’s response to the early belief in the bodily resurrection:

no response about how this belief in a resurrection could have emerged in the absence of background belief in the death of the Messiah and the resurrection of one man before the general resurrection of all the righteous at the end of the age

What about Crossley’s hallucination theory?

Crossley says that the followers of Jesus had visions, and they interpreted these visions against the story of the Maccabean martyrs who looked forward to their own resurrections

but the hallucination hypothesis doesn’t account for the empty tomb

and the Maccabean martyrs were not expecting the resurrection of one man, and certainly not the Messiah – so that story doesn’t provide the right background belief for a hallucination of a single resurrected person prior to the end of the age

if the appearances were non-physical, the disciples would not have applied the word resurrection – it would just have been a vision

the visions could easily be reconciled with the idea that somehow God was pleased with Jesus and that he had some glorified/vindicated non-corporeal existence – but not resurrection

not only that, the hallucination hypothesis doesn’t even explain the visions, because there were visions to groups, to skeptics and to enemies in several places

What about the argument that only Christians accept the resurrection?

it’s an ad hominem attack that avoids the arguments

James Crossley’s first rebuttal

Regarding the burial:

I could be persuaded of that the burial account is accurate

Regarding the non-expectation of a suffering/dying Messiah:

Jesus thought he was going to die

this thinking he was going to die overturned all previous Messianic expectations that the Messiah wouldn’t suffer or die

the early Jews could easily reconcile the idea of a suffering, dead man killed by the Romans with the power of the all-powerful Messiah who supposed to reign forever

no actually bodily resurrection would have to happen to get them to continue to identify an executed corpse with the role of Messiah

Regarding the belief in the bodily resurrection:

it would be natural for Jews, who believed in a general resurrection of all the rigtheous dead at the end of the age, to interpret a non-physical vision of one man after he died as a bodily resurrection, even though no Jew had ever considered the resurrection of one man before the general resurrection before Jesus

Regarding the testimony of the women:

Just because women were not able to testify in courts of law (unless there were no male witnesses), the early church might still invent a story where the women are the first witnesses

first, the disciples had fled the scene, so only the women were left

and it would have been a good idea for the early church to invent women as the first witnesses – the fact that they could not testify in court makes them ideal witnesses and very persuasive

also, it’s a good idea to invent women as witnesses, because the Romans had a rule that said that they never killed women, so they wouldn’t have killed these women – Romans only ever kill men

in any case, the first witness to the empty tomb is angel, so as long as people could talk to the angel as being the first witness, that’s the best story to invent

Regarding the consensus of Christian scholars:

I am not saying that Craig’s facts are wrong, just that appealing to consensus is not legitimate

he has to appeal to the evidence, not the consensus

Regarding my naturalistic bias:

I don’t know or care if naturalism is true, let’s look at the evidence

Regarding the genre of the gospels:

the creative story-telling is common in all genres, it’s not a genre in itself

stuff about Roman emperors also has creative story-telling

Regarding the legendary nature of the empty tomb in Mark:

First, Christians interpreted the visions as a bodily resurrection

Second, they invented the story of the empty tomb to go with that interpretation

Third, they died for their invention

William Lane Craig’s second rebuttal

The burial:

Bill’s case doesn’t need to know the specifics of the burial, only that the location was known

but the gospels are none of these genres – the gospels are ancient biographies

Craig also gave five arguments as to why the tomb was empty

the burial story supports the empty tomb

there is multiple independent attestation, then it cannot be a creative fiction invented in Mark alone

the witnesses were in Jerusalem, so they were in a position to know

regarding the women, even though Jesus respected the women, their testimony would not be convincing to others, so why invent a story where they are the witnesses

the male disciples did not flee the scene, for example, Peter was there to deny Jesus three times

if the story is made up, who cares what the male disciples did, just invent them on the scene anyway

the angel is not authoritative, because the angel cannot be questioned, but the women can be questioned

there was no response on the lack of embellishment

there was no response to the earliest Jewish response implying that the tomb was empty

The appearances:

we agree on the appearances

The early belief in the resurrection:

he says that Jesus predicted his own death

yes, but that would only cause people to think that he was a martyr, not that he was the messiah – something else is needed for them to keep their believe that he was the Messiah even after he died, because the Messiah wasn’t supposed to die

and of course, there was no expectation of a single person rising from the dead before the general resurrection, and certainly not the Messiah

The consensus of scholars:

Jewish scholars like Geza Vermes and Pinchas Lapide accept these minimal facts like the empty tomb, it’s not just Christian scholars

Against Crossley’s hallucination hypothesis:

it doesn’t explain the empty the tomb

it doesn’t explain the early belief in the resurrection

hallucinations would only lead to the idea that God had exalted/glorified Jesus, not that he was bodily raised from the dead

the hallucination theory cannot accommodate all of the different kinds of appearances; individual, group, skeptic, enemy, etc.

The pre-supposition of naturalism:

if Crossley is not committed to naturalism, then he should be open to the minimal facts and to the best explanation of those facts

the hallucination hypothesis has too many problems

the resurrection hypothesis explains everything, and well

James Crossley’s second rebuttal

Religious pluralism:

well, there are lots of other religious books

those other religious books have late sources, and are filled with legends and myths, and no eyewitness testimony

so why should we trust 1 Cor 15 and the early source for Mark and the other early eyewitness testimony in the New Testament?

if other religious books can be rejected for historical reasons, then surely the New Testament can be rejected for historical reasons

Genre:

the genre of ancient biography can incorporate and commonly incorporates invented legendaryt story-telling

this is common in Roman, Greek and Jewish literature and everyone accepts that

Empty tomb: multiple attestation

ok, so maybe the empty tomb is multiply attested, but that just gets back to a belief, not to a fact

multiple attestation is not the only criteria, and Craig needs to use the other criteria to make his case stronger

Empty tomb: invented

if there is a belief in the resurrection caused by the visions, then the empty tomb would have to be invented

why aren’t there more reliable stories of people visiting the empty tomb in more sources?

Empty tomb: role of the women

there are women who have an important role in the Bible, like Judith and Esther

Mark’s passage may have used women who then kept silent in order to explain why no one knew where the empty tomb was

if the fleeing of the men is plausible to explain the women, then why not use that? why appeal to the supernatural?

we should prefer any explanation that is naturalistic even if it is not as good as the supernatural explanation at explaining everything

Empty tomb: embellishment

well there is an angel there, that’s an embellishment

anyway, when you say there is no embellishment, what are you comparing it to that makes you say that?

Appearances: anthropology

I’ve read anthropology literature that has some cases where people have hallucinations as groups

Appearances: theology

the hallucinations would not be interpreted against the background theological beliefs that ruled out the resurrection of one man before then general resurrection of all the righteous dead

these hallucinations could have been so compelling that they made the earliest Christians, and skeptics like James, and enemies like the Pharisee Paul abandon all of their previous background beliefs, proclaim the new doctrine of a crucified and resurrected Messiah which no one had ever expected, and then gone on to die for that belief

the hallucinations could have changed all of their theology and reversed all of their beliefs about the what the word resurrection meant

William Lane Craig’s conclusion

Supernaturalism:

None of the four facts are supernatural, they are natural, and ascertained by historians using normal historical methods

the supernatural part only comes in after we decide on the facts when we are deciding which explanation is the best

a tomb being found empty is not a miraculous fact

Genre:

the gospels are not analagous to these rabbinical stories, the purpose and dating is different

Empty tomb:

what multiple attestation shows is that it was not made-up by Mark

and the argument was augmented with other criteria, like the criterion of embarrassment and the criterion of dissimilarity

Judith and Esther are very rare exceptions, normally women were not viewed as reliable witnesses

if the story was invented, whatever purpose the inventors had would have been better served by inventing male witnesses

Craig grants that the angel may be an embellishment for the sake of argument, but there are no other embellishments

the real embellishments occur in forged gnostic gospels in the second and third centuries, where there are theological motifs added to the bare fact of the empty tomb (e.g. – the talking cross in the Gospel of Peter)

he had no response to the earliest jewish response which implied an empty tomb

Belief in the resurrection:

there was no way for Jewish people to interpret an appearance as a bodily resurrection before the end of the world, they did not expect that

they could have imagined exaltation, but not a bodily resurrection

James Crossley’s conclusion

Supernatural explanation:

as long as there is any other other possible naturalistic explanation, we should prefer that, no matter how unlikely

Creative stories:

some of these creative stories appear within the lifetimes of the people connected to the events (none mentioned)

Embellishment:

you should compare to earlier stories when looking for embellishments, not later

and we don’t have any earlier sources, so we just don’t know the extent of the embellishment

Jewish response:

they probably just heard about the empty tomb, and didn’t check on it, then invented the stole-the-body explanation without ever checking to see if the tomb was empty or not

While watching this lecture, it struck what good preparation it was for understanding debates. This lecture is more about historical methods, but if you’re interested in Mike’s minimal facts case for the resurrection, here’s a video on that:

This is the case he uses in his debates with Richard Carrier, Dale Allison, Bart Ehrman, etc.

Mike Licona’s ministry is here: Risen Jesus but there is more to his work than just the resurrection. He co-edited a book on 50 evidences for God from many different areas with William Dembski. He likes evidence from every discipline you can think of, and then some.

Have you ever heard Gary Habermas, Michael Licona or William Lane Craig defend the resurrection of Jesus as the best explanation for the “minimal facts” about Jesus? The lists of minimal facts that they use are typically agreed to by their opponents during the debates.

Now in his early published work Dr. Ehrman expressed skepticism about these facts. He insisted that we cannot really affirm these facts.

[…]Dr. Ehrman has himself come to re-think his position on these issues. Inconsistencies in the details notwithstanding, he now recognizes that we have “solid traditions,” not only for Jesus’ burial, but also for the women’s discovery of the empty tomb, and therefore, he says, we can conclude with “some certainty” that Jesus was in fact buried by Joseph of Arimathea in a tomb and that three days later the tomb was found empty.

When I discovered that Professor Ehrman had reversed himself on this question, my admiration for his honesty and scholarly objectivity shot up. Very few scholars, once they’ve gone into print on an issue, have the courage to re-think that issue and admit that they were wrong. Dr. Ehrman’s reversal of his opinion on these matters is testimony, not merely to the force of the evidence for these four facts, but also to his determination to follow the evidence wherever it leads. What this means is that my first contention is not an issue of disagreement in tonight’s debate.

So what are the criteria that historians use to derive a list of minimal facts about Jesus?

The other way, more influential in contemporary New Testament scholarship, is to establish specific facts about Jesus without assuming the general reliability of the Gospels. The key here are the so-called “Criteria of Authenticity” which enable us to establish specific sayings or events in Jesus’ life as historical. Scholars involved in the quest of the historical Jesus have enunciated a number of these critieria for detecting historically authentic features of Jesus, such as dissimilarity to Christian teaching, multiple attestation, linguistic semitisms, traces of Palestinian milieu, retention of embarrassing material, coherence with other authentic material, and so forth.

It is somewhat misleading to call these “criteria,” for they aim at stating sufficient, not necessary, conditions of historicity. This is easy to see: suppose a saying is multiply attested and dissimilar but not embarrassing. If embarrassment were a necessary condition of authenticity, then the saying would have to be deemed inauthentic, which is wrong-headed, since its multiple attestation and dissimilarity are sufficient for authenticity. Of course, the criteria are defeasible, meaning that they are not infallible guides to authenticity. They might be better called “Indications of Authenticity” or “Signs of Credibility.”

In point of fact, what the criteria really amount to are statements about the effect of certain types of evidence upon the probability of various sayings or events in Jesus’ life. For some saying or event S and evidence of a certain type E, the criteria would state that, all things being equal, the probability of S given E is greater than the probability of S on our background knowledge alone. So, for example, all else being equal, the probability of some event or saying is greater given its multiple attestation than it would have been without it.

What are some of the factors that might serve the role of E in increasing the probability of some saying or event S? The following are some of the most important:

(1) Historical congruence: S fits in with known historical facts concerning the context in which S is said to have occurred.

(2) Independent, early attestation: S appears in multiple sources which are near to the time at which S is alleged to have occurred and which depend neither upon each other nor a common source.

(3) Embarrassment: S is awkward or counter-productive for the persons who serve as the source of information for S.

(5) Semitisms: traces in the narrative of Aramaic or Hebrew linguistic forms.

(6) Coherence: S is consistent with already established facts about Jesus.

For a good discussion of these factors see Robert Stein, “The ‘Criteria’ for Authenticity,” in Gospel PerspectivesI, ed. R. T. France and David Wenham (Sheffield, England: JSOT Press, 1980), pp. 225-63.

Notice that these “criteria” do not presuppose the general reliability of the Gospels. Rather they focus on a particular saying or event and give evidence for thinking that specific element of Jesus’ life to be historical, regardless of the general reliability of the document in which the particular saying or event is reported. These same “criteria” are thus applicable to reports of Jesus found in the apocryphal Gospels, or rabbinical writings, or even the Qur’an. Of course, if the Gospels can be shown to be generally reliable documents, so much the better! But the “criteria” do not depend on any such presupposition. They serve to help spot historical kernels even in the midst of historical chaff. Thus we need not concern ourselves with defending the Gospels’ every claim attributed to Jesus in the gospels; the question will be whether we can establish enough about Jesus to make faith in him reasonable.

And you can see Dr. Craig using these criteria to defend minimal facts in his debates. For example, in his debate with Ehrman, he alludes to the criteria when making his case for the empty tomb.

Here, he uses multiple attestation and the criteria of embarrassment:

Among the reasons which have led most scholars to this conclusion are the following:

1. The empty tomb is also multiply attested by independent, early sources.

Mark’s source didn’t end with the burial, but with the story of the empty tomb, which is tied to the burial story verbally and grammatically. Moreover, Matthew and John have independent sources about the empty tomb; it’s also mentioned in the sermons in the Acts of the Apostles (2.29; 13.36); and it’s implied by Paul in his first letter to the Corinthian church (I Cor. 15.4). Thus, we have again multiple, early, independent attestation of the fact of the empty tomb.

2. The tomb was discovered empty by women.

In patriarchal Jewish society the testimony of women was not highly regarded. In fact, the Jewish historian Josephus says that women weren’t even permitted to serve as witnesses in a Jewish court of law. Now in light of this fact, how remarkable it is that it is women who are the discoverers of Jesus’ empty tomb. Any later legendary account would certainly have made male disciples like Peter and John discover the empty tomb. The fact that it is women, rather than men, who are the discoverers of the empty tomb is best explained by the fact that they were the chief witnesses to the fact of the empty tomb, and the Gospel writers faithfully record what, for them, was an awkward and embarrassing fact.

There are actually a few more reasons for believing in the empty tomb that he doesn’t go into in the debate, but you can find them in his written work. For example, in his essay on Gerd Ludemann’s “vision” hypothesis. That essay covers the reasons for all four of his minimal facts.

So, if you are going to talk about the resurrection with a skeptic, you don’t want to invoke the Bible as some sort of inerrant/inspired Holy Book.

Try this approach instead:

Explain the criteria that historians use to get their lists of minimal facts

Explain your list of minimal facts

Defend your list of minimal facts using the criteria

Cite skeptics who admit to each of your minimal facts, to show that they are widely accepted

List some parts of the Bible that don’t pass the criteria (e.g. – guard at the tomb, Matthew earthquake)

Explain why those parts don’t pass the criteria, and explain that they are not part of your case

Challenge your opponent to either deny some or all the facts, or propose a naturalistic alternative that explains the facts better than the resurrection

Don’t let your opponent attack any of your minimal facts by attacking other parts of the Bible (e.g. – the number of angels being one or two, etc.)

And just keep in mind that there is no good case for the resurrection that does not make heavy use of the early creed in 1 Corinthians 15:3-8. You have to use that – it’s the law.

Back to the minimal facts criteria. The best essay on the minimal facts criteria that I’ve read is the one by Robert H. Stein in “Contending with Christianity’s Critics“. It’s a good short essay that goes over all the historical criteria that are used to derive the short list of facts from which we infer the conclusion “God raised Jesus from the dead”. That whole book is really very, very good.

There is not much snark in this summary, because Crossley is a solid scholar, and very fair with the evidence. He’s also done debates with Richard Bauckham and Michael Bird. You have to respect him for getting out there and defending his views in public.

SUMMARY

William Lane Craig’s opening speech

Two contentions:

There are four minimal facts that are accepted by most historians

The best explanation of the four minimal facts is that God raised Jesus from the dead

Contention 1 of 2:

Fact 1: The burial

The burial is multiply attested

The burial is based on the early source material that Mark used for his gospel

Scholars date this Markan source to within 10 years of the crucifixion

The burial is also in the early passage in 1 Cor 15:3-8

So you have 5 sources, some of which are very early

The burial is credited to a member of the Sanhedrin

the burial is probable because shows an enemy of the church doing right

this makes it unlikely to to be an invention

Fact 2: The empty tomb

The burial story supports the empty tomb

the site of Jesus’ grave was known

the disciples could not proclaim a resurrection if the body were still in it

the antagonists to the early Christians could have produced the body

The empty tomb is multiple attested

it’s mentioned explicitly in Mark

it’s in the separate sources used by Matthew and John

it’s in the early sermons documented in Acts

it’s implied by 1 Cor 15:3-8, because resurrection requires that the body is missing

The empty tomb was discovered by women

the testimony of women of women was not normally allowed in courts of law

if this story was being made up, they would have chosen male disciples

The empty tomb discover lacks legendary embellishment

there is no theological or apologetical reflection on the meaning of the tomb

The early Jewish response implies that the tomb was empty

the response was that the disciples stole the body

that requires that the tomb was found empty

Fact 3: The appearances to individuals and groups, some of the them hostile

The list of appearances is in 1 Cor 15:3-8

this material is extremely early, withing 1-3 years after the cross

James, the brother of Jesus, was not a believer when he got his appearance

Paul was hostile to the early church when he got his appearance

Specific appearances are multiply attested

Peter: attested by Luke and Paul

The twelve: attested by Luke, John and Paul

The women: attested by Matthew and John

Fact 4: The early belief in the resurrection emerged in a hostile environment

There was no background belief in a dying Messiah

There was no background belief in a single person resurrecting before the general resurrection of all of the righteous at the end of the age

The disciples were willing to die for their belief in the resurrection of Jesus

The resurrection is the best explanation for the transformation of the disciples from frightened to reckless of death

Contention 2 of 2:

The resurrection is the best explanation because it passes C.B. McCullough’s six tests for historical explanations

None of the naturalistic explanations accounts for the minimal facts as well as the resurrection

James Crossley’s opening speech

Appeals to the majority of scholars doesn’t prove anything

the majority of people in the west are Christians so of course there are a majority of scholars that support the resurrection

there are Christian schools where denial of the resurrection can result in termination

The best early sources (1 Cor 15:3-8 and Mark) are not that good

1 Cor 15:3-8 doesn’t support the empty tomb

verse 4 probably does imply a bodily resurrection

the passage does have eyewitnesses to appearances of Jesus

but there are no eyewitnesses to the empty tomb in this source

appearances occur in other cultures in different times and places

Jesus viewed himself as a martyr

his followers may have had hallucinations

Mark 16:1-8

Mark is dated to the late 30s and early 40s

The women who discover the tomb tell no one about the empty tomb

The gospels show signs of having things added to them

Jewish story telling practices allowed the teller to make things up to enhance their hero

one example of this would be the story of the earthquake and the people coming out of their graves

that story isn’t in Mark, nor any external sources like Josephus

if there really was a mass resurrection, where are these people today?

so this passage in Matthew clearly shows that at least some parts of the New Testament could involve

what about the contradiction between the women tell NO ONE and yet other people show up at the empty tomb

the story about Jesus commissioning the early church to evangelize Gentiles was probably added

there are also discrepancies in the timing of events and appearances

why are there explicit statements of high Christology in John, but not in the earlier sources?

William Lane Craig’s first rebuttal

Crossley’s response to the burial: he accepts it

Crossley’s response to the empty tomb: he thinks it was made up

rabbinical stories are not comparable to the gospel accounts

the rabbinical stories are just anecdotal creative story-telling

the gospels are ancient biographies – the genre is completely different

the rabbinic miracle stories are recorded much later than the gospels

the rabbi’s legal and moral ideas were written down right away

the miracle stories were written down a century or two later

in contrast, the miracle stories about Jesus are in the earliest sources, like Mark

the rabbinical stories are intended as entertainment, not history

the gospels are intended as biography

just because there are some legendary/apocalyptic elements in Matthew, it doesn’t undermine things like the crucfixion that are historically accurate

Crossley’s response to the evidence for the empty tomb:

no response to the burial

the empty tomb cannot be made up, it was implied by Paul early on

the women wouldn’t have said nothing forever – they eventually talked after they arrived to where the disciples were

no response to the lack of embellishment

no response to the early Jewish polemic

Crossley’s response to the appearances

he agrees that the first followers of Jesus had experiences where they thought Jesus was still alive

Crossley’s response to the early belief in the bodily resurrection:

no response about how this belief in a resurrection could have emerged in the absence of background belief in the death of the Messiah and the resurrection of one man before the general resurrection of all the righteous at the end of the age

What about Crossley’s hallucination theory?

Crossley says that the followers of Jesus had visions, and they interpreted these visions against the story of the Maccabean martyrs who looked forward to their own resurrections

but the hallucination hypothesis doesn’t account for the empty tomb

and the Maccabean martyrs were not expecting the resurrection of one man, and certainly not the Messiah – so that story doesn’t provide the right background belief for a hallucination of a single resurrected person prior to the end of the age

if the appearances were non-physical, the disciples would not have applied the word resurrection – it would just have been a vision

the visions could easily be reconciled with the idea that somehow God was pleased with Jesus and that he had some glorified/vindicated non-corporeal existence – but not resurrection

not only that, the hallucination hypothesis doesn’t even explain the visions, because there were visions to groups, to skeptics and to enemies in several places

What about the argument that only Christians accept the resurrection?

it’s an ad hominem attack that avoids the arguments

James Crossley’s first rebuttal

Regarding the burial:

I could be persuaded of that the burial account is accurate

Regarding the non-expectation of a suffering/dying Messiah:

Jesus thought he was going to die

this thinking he was going to die overturned all previous Messianic expectations that the Messiah wouldn’t suffer or die

the early Jews could easily reconcile the idea of a suffering, dead man killed by the Romans with the power of the all-powerful Messiah who supposed to reign forever

no actually bodily resurrection would have to happen to get them to continue to identify an executed corpse with the role of Messiah

Regarding the belief in the bodily resurrection:

it would be natural for Jews, who believed in a general resurrection of all the rigtheous dead at the end of the age, to interpret a non-physical vision of one man after he died as a bodily resurrection, even though no Jew had ever considered the resurrection of one man before the general resurrection before Jesus

Regarding the testimony of the women:

Just because women were not able to testify in courts of law (unless there were no male witnesses), the early church might still invent a story where the women are the first witnesses

first, the disciples had fled the scene, so only the women were left

and it would have been a good idea for the early church to invent women as the first witnesses – the fact that they could not testify in court makes them ideal witnesses and very persuasive

also, it’s a good idea to invent women as witnesses, because the Romans had a rule that said that they never killed women, so they wouldn’t have killed these women – Romans only ever kill men

in any case, the first witness to the empty tomb is angel, so as long as people could talk to the angel as being the first witness, that’s the best story to invent

Regarding the consensus of Christian scholars:

I am not saying that Craig’s facts are wrong, just that appealing to consensus is not legitimate

he has to appeal to the evidence, not the consensus

Regarding my naturalistic bias:

I don’t know or care if naturalism is true, let’s look at the evidence

Regarding the genre of the gospels:

the creative story-telling is common in all genres, it’s not a genre in itself

stuff about Roman emperors also has creative story-telling

Regarding the legendary nature of the empty tomb in Mark:

First, Christians interpreted the visions as a bodily resurrection

Second, they invented the story of the empty tomb to go with that interpretation

Third, they died for their invention

William Lane Craig’s second rebuttal

The burial:

Bill’s case doesn’t need to know the specifics of the burial, only that the location was known

but the gospels are none of these genres – the gospels are ancient biographies

Craig also gave five arguments as to why the tomb was empty

the burial story supports the empty tomb

there is multiple independent attestation, then it cannot be a creative fiction invented in Mark alone

the witnesses were in Jerusalem, so they were in a position to know

regarding the women, even though Jesus respected the women, their testimony would not be convincing to others, so why invent a story where they are the witnesses

the male disciples did not flee the scene, for example, Peter was there to deny Jesus three times

if the story is made up, who cares what the male disciples did, just invent them on the scene anyway

the angel is not authoritative, because the angel cannot be questioned, but the women can be questioned

there was no response on the lack of embellishment

there was no response to the earliest Jewish response implying that the tomb was empty

The appearances:

we agree on the appearances

The early belief in the resurrection:

he says that Jesus predicted his own death

yes, but that would only cause people to think that he was a martyr, not that he was the messiah – something else is needed for them to keep their believe that he was the Messiah even after he died, because the Messiah wasn’t supposed to die

and of course, there was no expectation of a single person rising from the dead before the general resurrection, and certainly not the Messiah

The consensus of scholars:

Jewish scholars like Geza Vermes and Pinchas Lapide accept these minimal facts like the empty tomb, it’s not just Christian scholars

Against Crossley’s hallucination hypothesis:

it doesn’t explain the empty the tomb

it doesn’t explain the early belief in the resurrection

hallucinations would only lead to the idea that God had exalted/glorified Jesus, not that he was bodily raised from the dead

the hallucination theory cannot accommodate all of the different kinds of appearances; individual, group, skeptic, enemy, etc.

The pre-supposition of naturalism:

if Crossley is not committed to naturalism, then he should be open to the minimal facts and to the best explanation of those facts

the hallucination hypothesis has too many problems

the resurrection hypothesis explains everything, and well

James Crossley’s second rebuttal

Religious pluralism:

well, there are lots of other religious books

those other religious books have late sources, and are filled with legends and myths, and no eyewitness testimony

so why should we trust 1 Cor 15 and the early source for Mark and the other early eyewitness testimony in the New Testament?

if other religious books can be rejected for historical reasons, then surely the New Testament can be rejected for historical reasons

Genre:

the genre of ancient biography can incorporate and commonly incorporates invented legendaryt story-telling

this is common in Roman, Greek and Jewish literature and everyone accepts that

Empty tomb: multiple attestation

ok, so maybe the empty tomb is multiply attested, but that just gets back to a belief, not to a fact

multiple attestation is not the only criteria, and Craig needs to use the other criteria to make his case stronger

Empty tomb: invented

if there is a belief in the resurrection caused by the visions, then the empty tomb would have to be invented

why aren’t there more reliable stories of people visiting the empty tomb in more sources?

Empty tomb: role of the women

there are women who have an important role in the Bible, like Judith and Esther

Mark’s passage may have used women who then kept silent in order to explain why no one knew where the empty tomb was

if the fleeing of the men is plausible to explain the women, then why not use that? why appeal to the supernatural?

we should prefer any explanation that is naturalistic even if it is not as good as the supernatural explanation at explaining everything

Empty tomb: embellishment

well there is an angel there, that’s an embellishment

anyway, when you say there is no embellishment, what are you comparing it to that makes you say that?

Appearances: anthropology

I’ve read anthropology literature that has some cases where people have hallucinations as groups

Appearances: theology

the hallucinations would not be interpreted against the background theological beliefs that ruled out the resurrection of one man before then general resurrection of all the righteous dead

these hallucinations could have been so compelling that they made the earliest Christians, and skeptics like James, and enemies like the Pharisee Paul abandon all of their previous background beliefs, proclaim the new doctrine of a crucified and resurrected Messiah which no one had ever expected, and then gone on to die for that belief

the hallucinations could have changed all of their theology and reversed all of their beliefs about the what the word resurrection meant

William Lane Craig’s conclusion

Supernaturalism:

None of the four facts are supernatural, they are natural, and ascertained by historians using normal historical methods

the supernatural part only comes in after we decide on the facts when we are deciding which explanation is the best

a tomb being found empty is not a miraculous fact

Genre:

the gospels are not analagous to these rabbinical stories, the purpose and dating is different

Empty tomb:

what multiple attestation shows is that it was not made-up by Mark

and the argument was augmented with other criteria, like the criterion of embarrassment and the criterion of dissimilarity

Judith and Esther are very rare exceptions, normally women were not viewed as reliable witnesses

if the story was invented, whatever purpose the inventors had would have been better served by inventing male witnesses

Craig grants that the angel may be an embellishment for the sake of argument, but there are no other embellishments

the real embellishments occur in forged gnostic gospels in the second and third centuries, where there are theological motifs added to the bare fact of the empty tomb (e.g. – the talking cross in the Gospel of Peter)

he had no response to the earliest jewish response which implied an empty tomb

Belief in the resurrection:

there was no way for Jewish people to interpret an appearance as a bodily resurrection before the end of the world, they did not expect that

they could have imagined exaltation, but not a bodily resurrection

James Crossley’s conclusion

Supernatural explanation:

as long as there is any other other possible naturalistic explanation, we should prefer that, no matter how unlikely

Creative stories:

some of these creative stories appear within the lifetimes of the people connected to the events (none mentioned)

Embellishment:

you should compare to earlier stories when looking for embellishments, not later

and we don’t have any earlier sources, so we just don’t know the extent of the embellishment

Jewish response:

they probably just heard about the empty tomb, and didn’t check on it, then invented the stole-the-body explanation without ever checking to see if the tomb was empty or not